Artificial intelligence is surrounded by misunderstandings — even more so than augmented and virtual reality. We thought, since it’s going to play a large role in marketing in 2017, we’d clear the air about it.

Let’s cut to the chase: artificial intelligence is going to help us marketers create more human experiences.

Sounds like a contradiction? Read on.

Here we show you a quick overview of what AI is and how it’s beneficial to marketing. We’re also compiling a report where we take an in-depth look at AI as it was in 2016 and how it’s going to evolve in 2017.

Artificial Intelligence for Natural Emotions

Artificial intelligence is surrounded by a lot of myths. When we say ‘AI’ people tend to think ‘Skynet’ when they should be thinking ‘Person of Interest.’ Even if the latter depicts AI in a romanticized, anthropomorphized way as well, it’s a lot closer to what AI is today.

AI isn’t going to replace marketers and marketing teams. It isn’t going to replace human intelligence. Instead, it promises to free us from “repetitive drudgery.”

Simply put, AI helps us spend more of our time on mastering the human touch.

Content marketing natively with artificial intelligence

Once again, AI can sift through vast amounts of ones and zeros, spot patterns and trends. Recognizing those subtle changes in audience behavior could elude a human eye easily.

With the helpful suggestions of an artificial intelligence monitoring usage and performance all the time, marketers can refine their native content.

Without having to spend time analyzing performance, creativity becomes the differentiator. Again.

Engagement and AI

We’re still a long, long way away from a machine passing the famed Turing-test if we ever get there. AI won’t fool anyone anytime soon thinking they’re engaging with a human.

But there’s still a lot of value in using AI for engagement. It can fill in gaps where human interaction is not feasible or scalable.

Think virtual assistants like Siri, Cortana, or Alexa. We can’t put a human to answer every question people ask on Google. Customers are accepting — and expecting — the limitations of the technology in exchange for the value they receive.

Your customer service department doesn’t need to grow out of bounds. Similarly, you don’t need to annoy your customers with long waiting times while listening to horrible music. (But seriously, change your on-hold music today.)

Instead, you can deploy a chatbot to fill in the blanks until a human can give their attention.

Even in email, which is arguably the oldest piece of digital technology we use after web pages, AI can mean the difference between spamming your customers and engaging with them that brings in revenue.

Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and The Value of Early Adoption

Way back when the internet first came around, most people didn’t understand what the digital transformation meant.

Nowadays we’re much savvier.

And yet, compiling our report we found that most big plays in the marketing space are still wide open. You can still get in on the ground floor for a lot of them, including AI.

Without going into too much detail (we do that in our report) let us say this: find the gaps in your marketing and fill it with AI.

Whether that’s frontline customer service or back-end strategic analysis, artificial intelligence can put you ahead of your competitors. Much like outsourcing the heavy lifting of marketing to agencies or fractional CMOs you should outsource everything non-essential as well.

AI isn’t plug-and-play, nor will it “take over” your world. It simply offloads the unimportant so you can focus on growth and build your business.

Click on image below to get your technology-driven marketing Trends Report for 2017

Augmented reality and its little sibling virtual reality will be the definite hot trend in 2017.

But wait, didn’t we just say it was video?

We did. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, recent advances around video made augmented and virtual reality possible.

But let us explain what these technologies are about. (And what they’re not.)

What’s Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) Anyway?

Neither AR or VR are new. In fact, they’ve been a staple of science-fiction literature since the early 80s. And just like Nike’s self-lacing shoes or the hoverboard becoming actual things (just one year off Back to The Future’s prediction no less) now we have the technology to make those visions real. (The Cubs also won the World Series, which makes it three out of three for the movie-BTTF2.)

Augmented reality means using digital technology to enhance the real world with additional layers. From layers of information to interactivity added to passive experiences.

Virtual reality is putting you in a different world. Whether that’s somewhere you can’t go like the depths of the ocean or something that doesn’t exist at all like fantasy worlds.

For marketers, both options mean new ways to integrate content more naturally into a customer journey.

Using AR and VR for Marketing

As always, we examine technologies in this series in relation to the three core pillars of marketing concepts:

customer journey mapping and hyper-personalization

content marketing natively

engagement

While both AR and VR are new in the sense of adoption in both the consumer and the marketing space, they’ll be the big break of 2017.

Why? Because they’re built around a whole new concept of interacting with customers that create unique experiences.

AR and VR in customer journey mapping and hyper-personalization

Even social media, young as it is, has its own rules and traditions by now. Newer video platforms, while pushing the envelope still settle in into their comfort zones. It’s a natural process as users start using them.

Smart marketers spent 2016 observing customers interact with these new technologies. The new video platforms introduced influence driven by bottom-up content creation. Similarly, AR and VR are very much shaped by how customers use them.

Seeing this adoption gives tremendous insight for customer journey mapping. And building AR and VR around smart mobile devices presents an opportunity to go hyper-personal in crafting experiences.

Speaking of crafting hyper-personalized experiences:

Content marketing for AR and VR natively

We’ve talked a lot about the importance of creating native content for every platform you intend to use. Augmented reality (and virtual reality especially) not only benefits from it but requires native content.

Augmented reality content is layered onto the real world. Which means that if it’s obtrusive, like a pop-up ad on a website, users are immediately going to be yanked out of the immersion and disconnect from the brand. It has to be native and useful.

Creating a hastily augmented reality application just to have another advertising channel is like obtrusive pop-ups on a website. We sincerely hope we don’t need to explain why that’s bad.

Use location-aware technology. Reach users through the GPS on the phone, physical web content, or something else. Give useful information, and you’ll be remembered for it.

Virtual reality doesn’t have the same problem; it has a whole different one. Creating content in a three-dimensional space isn’t easy. Not because it’s expensive but because we have centuries-old mindsets used to two-dimensional content. Add interactivity to the mix, where customers are not just observers but actors, and we’re off to the races.

What helps is going back to the beginning. What story do you want to tell? What emotion are you trying to evoke? How does that translate into the new toolset you have available?

Remember when we talked about big data getting bigger? This is one aspect of that.

These technologies are designed to facilitate and record engagement. They’re an endless resource to learn more about what makes people tick. It also gives creative new ways for people to interact with brands and each other. You may not even need to come up with engagement ideas — your customer will tell you what they want.

Should you go all in on AR and VR in 2017?

We often get these questions from clients. We understand the desire to get directions in a fast-changing world. But there’s a problem.

The answer is yes and no. Partially because these technologies are new, but mostly because it’s not the right question.

What we tell our clients – and what is rewarded by the market – is asking the right questions.

You shouldn’t ever “go all in” on a trend just for the sake of it. Does it make sense within your customer journey map? Can you integrate the toolset into your storytelling? Are you able to keep up with the engagement it brings?

We believe augmented reality is going to be the “boom” of 2017. Virtual reality is still a bit further off to become really big, but the law of accelerating results suggests we don’t have as much time as we like to think.

Winning isn’t about using AR or VR — it isn’t even about using technology. It’s about using technology in service of your audience. But as far as technologies go, AR and VR are huge ones.

Both are fundamentally challenging the core understanding of content and interaction. As long as you understand that and willing to be the change you’re good. If not, stick with technology and storytelling you know.

Until you learn AR and VR, because soon enough neither will be optional for your business.

Click on image below to get your technology-driven marketing Trends Report for 2017

With all trends pointing toward video as the major medium for content in 2017, what does that mean for businesses and marketers?

Video As the First ‘Smart’ Medium

Marketers have a tendency to overuse a medium. And their attempt to jump on the attention bandwagon creates a negative reaction from the market.

But marketers are getting smarter. And so are the platforms that broker the attention of the market. They learn from the mistakes of their peers.

Twitter lost a lot of its relevance to people when brands started to use it as a billboard instead of a chatroom. Facebook works hard to avoid the same mistake. It’s giving its users power to remove themselves from advertisers’ reach. It’s also giving advertisers tools to target people specifically interested in what they are offering. This balancing act, however, is a tough needle to thread. Mistakes are made on both sides of the aisle.

Newer platforms are unlikely to go down the same path as their predecessors. Platforms like YouTube, Instagram, or Snapchat understand and avoid these mistakes from the start. Their value is the attention of satisfied users.

Together video platforms and their users are changing how content is produced and consumed. People prefer more authentic, more creative content over the big-budget media we know from television. YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat are building their entire platform around independent content creators.

All this plays into the popularity and impact of video as the prominent medium of 2017.

The Impact of Video on Marketing in 2017

(and the Impact of Marketing on Video)

As always, we examine technologies centered around our three main pillars:

It shifted from large budgets and sterile, overproduced content. Video in 2017 will be driven by raw, quick, and creative content produced on a large scale. Think daily vlogs or updates to an Instagram or Snapchat story twenty, thirty, or even more times a day. Or even platforms we haven’t heard of yet.

This creates an opportunity for content scalability across the customer journey map. Lowered entry barriers and the over-saturation of marketing messages in other media shaped video to be driven from the bottom up. Brands have better results collaborating with influencers than on their own. Engaging content can be produced to match the focal points of the customer journey map.

Raw, creative video like Snapchat and Instagram is taking over the traditional media spots. Video production as we knew it from television is not sufficient or efficient any more.

This is a huge impact on the marketing landscape. Brands need to gravitate toward outsourcing content creation to influencers. They’re embedded in their platform and bring an already engaged and attentive audience to the table.

The influencers who build large audiences around their content do so while keeping engagement high. Their audiences become communities, built on a common interest but going beyond it. Deep attention spreads across multiple traditional customer segments. And that flow creates more value than what was possible before.

Video Didn’t Kill the Radio Star

All that being said, it’s important to note that old media is still strong and effective. The smartphone may be what television was for the radio. But radio is still around. And so is television. Books didn’t disappear either.

Brands do well learning the value of scaling through strategic fragmentation from influencers. Instead of producing their entire content for a single platform they create funnels across multiple. Filmmakers write blogs on Medium. Musicians create images on Instagram. Entrepreneurs shoot videos for YouTube.

By creating a FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) in their audience, they keep them constantly engaged and funneled. They also maximize their reach leveraging different content for the different audiences.

What Do You Need to Do To Succeed with Video in 2017?

The rise of influencers changed the game marketers played. It also made it more efficient. Instead of approaching marketing as a monolithic block, treat it as a machine with many parts.

You as the brand determine what the machine does. But it’s better to outsource execution to influencers. Instead of chasing after your market, influencers can deliver your market to you. They already have the credibility and know-how that’d take your team a long time to acquire.

But if your intent is to put in the time and hard work to embed yourself with your market, here’s a handful of the most important things you need to know.

Giving people value without any expectation for them to buy or opt-in to your content is what drives attention and engagement. Of course, in the long run, your return on this investment will be scaled up. But only one the long run, and you need to understand and accept that.

Always remember that it has to be valuable for your audience and not for you. Your value comes from creating value without expecting reciprocity.

Don’t create content to go viral or it never will. Create it to be valuable for a single person in your audience. Utilize all tools, from big data to artificial intelligence, to find the common ground.

These micro experiences bring your audience together. And every person will take something different from your content while leaving the common interest intact. Your audience effectively personalizes your content for themselves.

Experimenting is good, especially in the beginning. But once something’s producing results, you’ll need to double down on it. Does your audience like puppies? Give them puppy videos! Do they prefer behind-the-scenes footage from your office? Start a daily vlog.

When we say “double-down” we don’t mean overdo the amount. Drowning your market with content: 1) will create the same adverse effect as on other platforms; 2) isn’t scalable.

Finding out what your target audience likes (customer journey mapping!) and adjusting it to what your actual audience likes (analytics and big data!) is a constant balancing act.

4. HOW THEY LIKE IT

Pushing the same content across multiple channels isn’t scaling: it’s spamming.
Examine your storytelling that comes from your vision and strategic planning. You can separate content packages by platform, creating hooks on one to feed the others.
Creating native content on every platform is essential.

Click on image below to get your Technology-Driven Marketing Trends Report for 2017

How big data is changing business, and more specifically marketing, in 2017?

In a word: completely.

Collecting data has never been a problem. It’s streamed towards us constantly. And the technologies we develop are inherently collecting more and more – big data is getting bigger and bigger.

What’s changed in 2016 and be a centerpiece in 2017 is the way we use big data. The entirety of 2017 will be resting on practical technologies processing big data to fuel personalized content.

The tools that we’re covering in this series are turning anonymized huge datasets into micro-level human interactions.

In 2017 We’ll Be Using Everyone’s Big Data to Capture Individual Customers

Everyone means no one. We need to pick a lane and create personal from the impersonal. Big data is the source from which we can actualize hyper-personalized communication for individual customers.

When it first came into play, big data was mostly used to provide a high-level overview of large market trends. Think detecting currents in the ocean.

In 2016 we started to learn not only the importance of hyper-personalization but also developing the tools to harness the power of big data for it. We already knew the currents; now we are able to catch the fish.

You need to be both macro and micro and everything in between to succeed.

Aligning Big Data to the Three Pillars of Marketing in 2017

Big data provides the building blocks for success on all three levels:

customer journey mapping and hyper-personalization

content marketing natively

engagement

2017 will be about overlaying and syncing isolated datasets. The generated personalization focal points will be beacons for marketers. They connect the individual human moments into the larger brand experience.

We establish settlements (content platforms) where the conditions are the most advantageous.

We navigate by the landmarks (common data points) the landscape gives us.

How Big Data Helps Content Creation Natively

Big data is a very young, very modern technology. It’s not bound by tradition or pre-existing practices.

Using big data can tell brands how to create or enhance native content. For example in video, that we’ll cover in detail in our next post, big data can inform marketers:

How long people’s attention are kept consuming content? If people stay long, longer videos are advised; if they click away early, cut the length down.

What type of content they like or dislike? As obvious as that sounds, many marketers still aren’t putting real effort into aligning with their market’s or buyer’s interests.

Is there a replay value on the content? —> If so, how can that change the way we connect other funnels? Calls-to-action within content may perform better than putting links in the description box.

Using tools like AI algorithms and taking advantage of narrow targeting, an audience can be defined and refined.

Why Marketers Need to Look To Big Data to Create Engagement

In addition to its power to be a background technology, big data can also create very human micro-experiences.

Recently Spotify created a series of advertisements that put the brand in a very human context. They used their datasets to spotlight the focal points that humanized the information.

Using big data creatively will be crucial in 2017. We can automatically generate and highlight interesting moments. Taking advantage of that and building human experiences around them is a recipe for success.

How Big Data Equalizes the Market

In the past, big data has been a domain of those who could invest in the technology and science to run it. Now, it opened up for everybody.

In our efforts to make big data and the technologies using it more efficient, we lowered the barriers for entry. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are brokering not only attention but the data behind it as well.

This creates an equalizing effect in the marketplace. More businesses have access to less expensive tools. Creativity became the main differentiator.

Using Smart Technologies to Process Big Data in 2017

Big data by itself is fairly useless. We need technologies to process all of it, recognize patterns, and filter data into information.

Artificial intelligence shines in processing large amounts of data quickly and creating projections for marketers. Automation helps bridge together the separate silos of information that is big data.

All these tools are designed to support the human decision-making process. But it remains a human decision-making process. To create human experiences, there needs to be a creative touch on top of the digital innovation.

Click on image below to get your technology-driven marketing Trends Report for 2017

Email marketing in 2017?!? Before you navigate away thinking we’re out of our minds, think about it for a second:

In a constantly connected world, what’s the one thing everybody has?

What’s the most direct connection to a customer in a digital space?

What ties together virtually every digital platform. Think login credentials or notification emails.

You guessed it: email. Just because it’s not ‘hip’ or ‘sexy’ it’s still the most adopted technology platform.

Most digital platforms are built to exchange consumer attention for advertising revenue. Yet, email is free. The customers are already there with no middle-man or mysterious algorithm.

Where Email Marketing Can Go Horribly Wrong

Facebook gives you an insane degree of personalization and targeting. But only if you’re willing to pay for it. And even so any user at any time can ignore your content. Facebook itself gives them the tools for it. These platform’s revenue correlates with the attention they can broker. Thus advertisers will always be at a disadvantage.

Now. Let’s set aside the scenario where you buy email lists, which we strongly discourage you doing so. Good email marketing is reactionary. Customers are willingly and directly express their interest in your company or product. They give you the most personal information they have.

Email has all the advantages and the simplicity, yet it’s often mistreated.

How? Here are some of the most common email marketing mistakes and why they fail:

Emailing too much. Customers have an information overload-problem as is, and then you pile on

Not emailing at all. If you forget about your customers, they sure as hell going to forget about you. And a lot faster, too.

Using blanket templates. Email may be a constant in technology but content consumption is changing. Customers expert personalization.

Going for the sale. Just because they showed an open mind to your business, customers still need to be convinced to buy

Not coordinating between marketing campaigns. Branding is about being consistent. And it makes things easier for both your customer and you.

How To Win Email Marketing in 2017

In our framing post we talked about the three pillars of marketing win for 2017:

customer journey mapping and hyper-personalization

native content creation

engagement

Here’s how your email marketing strategy needs to be adapted to rest on these three pillars.

Customer Journey Mapping and Hyper-personalization in Email Marketing

It doesn’t matter if it’s an existing space or a whole new one, every marketing strategy for 2017 needs to start with aligning the business to the market.

This involves mapping out a customer journey. Content must be placed at strategic intercept points of this map to capture attention. Email marketing campaigns are at the largest of those points.

Once you mapped out your market you can start personalizing from the outside in. Email is content that benefits from all levels of personalization.

The position of email is a constant between different platforms. You can use it as a cornerstone for bringing in more personalization options.

Email ties into all major technology trends:

Apply big data to email list segmentation you can create different content.

Speaking to specific people creates a layer of personalization. Set up delivery at convenient times based on time zones.

We’ll be talking about big data and automation in separate posts. (Third and sixth, respectively, in the series.)

You need to be both macro and micro and everything in between to succeed in 2017. A smart marketing strategy will come with a premium.

Native Content Creation for Email Campaigns

Every platform has its own ‘language’. Marketers need to adapt their messaging to fit around them. Not doing so lowers conversion and retention at best. At worst, it outright hurts your branding efforts and cuts off revenue and growth.

Email is no different. It has its own delivery system and particularities like subject line, size, and compatibility. These define not only what’s possible but also what’s effective.

A) Email campaigns benefit from brevity.

Like all digital technology, email is subject to an enormous amount of information overload. The shorter and more direct the email the better. Every once in a while, a long email will perform well, but it needs context and setup beforehand.

Craft compelling storylines to tie together an email series in an engaging campaign. (We’ll be covering storytelling later in the series. We found that in addition to being a strategic approach, we should treat it as one of the technology platforms as well.)

C) Emails are excellent gateways for multichannel funnels.

Email itself is restricted in many ways, but it’s an excellent conversion tool. Use it to advance a customer within the lead generation funnel. Creating a hook in email to lead to content on other platforms should be a standard.

D) Feedback is comprehensive, automatic, and reliable.

There’s no other platform, save perhaps a website, that gives this much information. Email tools are able to record every aspect from open rates to click through trends.

Learn the language of email marketing and use it, creatively and natively. We’re way past the time when open rates were near-full and everybody was excited to get email. Standing out is not only still possible but crucial.

Engagement and Email Marketing

The point of customer journey mapping is personalization. The point of personalization is keeping up the engagement with our market.

Email should be placed at the most foundational level of a customer journey map. It’s natively engaging in one form or another. It provides automatic baseline feedback across the entire marketing strategy. And it’s practically omnipresent when it comes to customer adoption.

There’s no downside here, other than misusing the technology.

Still, many marketers don’t think about the “stop-start-continue” approach. What if you asked your customers these three simple questions:

What should we stop doing?

What should we start doing (that we aren’t already)?

What should we continue doing?

Reaching out to your customers kickstarts engagement to a direct level. When they feel their opinion matters and voices are heard, they’ll start telling you.

Whoever has the attention of the market wins.

Email Marketing in 2017 and Beyond

Email marketing in 2017 isn’t an archaic notion. It’s the foundation for everything else that comes after it. The technology may be older but also mature and fully adopted by the market. Different platforms capture different audiences — but email is simply above the normal segmentation.

Email is a technology platform with near-complete customer adoption. It has virtually no cost. It’s inherently built for both proactive and reactive actions.

New technologies aren’t replacing older ones but enhancing them. When all’s said and done the winners will be those who are able to meet the habits and expectations of their audience. A feat impossible without the strong foundations of email.

So, where’s your winning email marketing strategy for 2017?

We can create you a winning email strategy and save you the time and headaches.